As a matter of fact
men work for some present or future benefit for themselves. The
saint who sells all he has to give to the poor, does so with the hope
of obtaining a reward exceedingly great in the life to come. And
even if there were no life to come, his present life is happier far
than that of the man who grabs at all the wealth he can get until he
drops into the grave. The man who works "all for love and nothing
for reward" is a being incomprehensible to us ordinary mortals; he is
an angel, and if ever he was a candidate for a seat in Parliament he
was not elected. Even love--"which rules the court, the camp, the
grove"--is given only with the hope of a return of love; for
hopeless love is nothing but hopeless misery.
I once hired an old convict as gardener at five shillings a day. He
began to work in the morning with a great show of diligence while I
was looking on. But on my return home in the evening it was
wonderful to find how little work he had contrived to get through
during the day; so I began to watch him. His systematic way of doing
nothing would have been very amusing if it cost nothing. He pressed
his spade into the ground with his boot as slowly as possible, lifted
the sod very gently, and turned it over. Then he straightened his
back, looked at the ground to the right, then to the left, then in
front of him, and then cast his eyes along the garden fence.
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